Book abstract;
Addressing the interart, intertextual, and intermedial dimensions of David Bowie’s sonic and visual legacy, this book considers more than five decades of a career invested with a star’s luminosity that shines well beyond the remit of pop music.

The book approaches the idea of the star David Bowie as a medium in transit, undergoing constant movement and change. Within the context of celebrity studies, the concept of stardom provides an appropriate frame for an examination of Bowie’s transmedial activity, especially given his ongoing iconic signification within the celestial realm. While Bowie has traversed many mediums, he has also been described as a medium, which is consistent with the way he has described himself. With contributions from a wide range of disciplinary areas and countries, each chapter brings a fresh perspective on the concept of stardom and the conceptual significance of the terms ‘mediation’ and ‘navigation’ as they relate to Bowie and his career.

Containing a multitude of different approaches to the stardom and mediation of David Bowie, this book will be of interest to those studying celebrity, audio and visual legacy, and the relationships between different forms of media. It was originally published as a special issue of Celebrity Studies.

My Chapter abstract;
This chapter examines the influence of an outfit worn by David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth and on the cover of Low, upon the earliest football casuals – those of Liverpool FC from 1976–79. The significance of this outfit, a seemingly unremarkable duffle coat, is drawn out in order to demonstrate the nuanced rituals, acts and structures that make fashion a set of practices and social relations as well as a culturally loaded object. This case study demonstrates Bowie’s transmedial flow between film, music, sporting arenas, fiction and television interviews and his related contribution to the transference and creation of fashion cultures in a pre-digital age. It considers the value and shortcomings of subcultural studies when trying to understand a culture that is not one’s own, as well as the marginalization of casuals within analyses of subcultures generally. This article builds a methodological framework that draws upon theories of costume in film, fashion in fiction and existing research on working class dandyism and football culture. Representations of this outfit in the work of author Kevin Sampson – an ‘active participant’ in these new cultures – are analysed to demonstrate the role that clothing and emulation play in the relationship between a performer and their audience.

KEYWORDS: Fashion history, David Bowie, Bowie studies, Liverpool F.C., football culture, casuals, subcultures, fashion in fiction, Kevin Sampson, Steve Redhead

• http://radar.gsa.ac.uk/6466/